Sarah Stern will kick off the Big Read with a poetry workshop, providing writing exercises to inspire and motivate, drawing from themes in her own work—the natural world, finding the mystical in the ordinary, loss, desire, and resistance as also related to themes in Ursula Le Guin’s majestic storytelling triumph, A Wizard of Earthsea. She will read from her work and provide prompts for participants to write their own poems. Sarah Stern is the author of But Today Is Different and Another Word for Love. She is a five-time winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts’ BRIO Poetry Award.

Graphic artist Ray Felix will host this special presentation and workshop on the late artist’s process and theory, drawing parallels between comic book themes and works of fantasy such as A Wizard of Earthsea. William Erwin “Will” Eisner was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series The Spirit, was noted for its experiments in content and form.

Bronx River Arts Center (BRAC) Executive Director Gail Nathan will give this keynote presentation on her work with BRAC, a culturally diverse, multi-arts, non-profit organization that provides a forum for community, artists, and youth to transform creativity into vision. BRAC’s various programs cultivate leadership in an urban environment and stewardship of the Bronx’s most important natural resource—the Bronx River. Bronx Writers Center Director Charlie Vazquez will conduct an interview and Q&A for this special presentation, drawing parallels to Ursula LeGuin’s use of environmental themes in A Wizard of Earthsea.

Jasmine Hearn’s new solo work uses memories of home, travel, and the waters that we visited, and that visited us, as sources for a collage of dance, song, and storytelling. Revisiting imagery from an ongoing collaboration with visual artist and activist Jennifer Myers, Jasmine intends for this to be a map to follow where "the sable venus" has been in past, present, and future. ("The sable venus" blue and burning is also an account of the journeys of the sable venus, a character inspired by Robin Coste Lewis’ poem “The Voyage of the Sable Venus”.) Bronx Writers Center Director Charlie Vazquez will conduct an artist talk with Jasmine after the performance, regarding the impact of works of fantasy on her work.

Writing a book has often been compared to a journey. Whether your book is a novel or a memoir, this workshop provides practical suggestions for properly planning your journey. You will learn how to create a synopsis of the story you want to tell and a matrix of the characters you encounter along the way. Used together, these tools will provide you with an effective road map to your book’s successful completion, as he’ll exemplify through the structure used in A Wizard of Earthsea.

We tend to think of the Bronx as an urban landscape, but with Pelham Bay Park, Bronx Park, the Bronx Botanical Gardens and many other open spaces, the Bronx is a place where the natural world flourishes, sometimes unnoticed. In this poetry workshop, through a series of nested writing activities, we’ll explore the details of the natural world as we observe them, and write a poem in celebration of the wilderness that exists both outside and inside of us.

Regine Sawyer—the creator of Women in Comics(WinC)—will conduct this unique all-ages workshop geared toward starting a graphic novel. Don’t miss this opportunity to bring your ideas to life, a rare opportunity to receive guidance from one of the industry’s trailblazing voices.The ‘WinC’ collective is an artistic and informative initiative that educates communities about the role and merit of women working in comics. The Bronx Writers Center will be giving out free copies of A Wizard of Earthsea and talking about the book after Regine Sawyer’s workshop.

Join us in our future home of Westchester Square New York Public Library for this special book discussion hosted by Bronx Writers Center Director Charlie Vázquez. We’ll be giving away free copies of A Wizard of Earthsea in advance and discussing the themes of magic, adversity an adventure that appear throughout the story. Don’t miss this chance to meet fellow readers and writers and get involved in Bronx Council on the Arts and our amazing programs.

Whether or not your story takes place on Earth or another planet, dimension, or timeline, you need to build a reality for your characters—and your readers—to live in. Join us for look at science-fiction/fantasy world-building, with some writing exercises, in this two-hour workshop that will draw examples from A Wizard of Earthsea. Richie Narvaez is a member of the Mystery Writers of America – New York and the author of Roachkiller and Other Stories.

Children’s book author John Martin will present this special workshop for aspiring children’s books authors. He will address concepts such as inspiration, message, storyboarding, illustrations and publishing options for enterprising authors in this thriving and diversifying publishing genre. This is a wonderful opportunity to learn the process of bookmaking from idea to finished product, regardless of the style you work in. Copies of A Wizard of Earthsea will be available for the book discussion that will follow John Martin’s presentation.

Sofia Quintero (aka Black Artemis) has published six novels, the last two for young adults. In this workshop, you will mine your own adolescence for ideas, tackle issues of language (e.g. slang), trends and representation and create an outline that you can develop into a completed manuscript that will attract the attention of agents and editors and change the life of readers. The Bronx Writers Center will give away free copies of A Wizard of Earthsea for the book discussion that will follow.

The Bronx Writers Center, a program of Bronx Council on the Arts, and is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Arts Midwest and the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York Council for the Humanities; the New Yankee Stadium Community Benefits Fund; the Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation; the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Inc.; the Bronx Delegation of the NYC Council - including Council Member James Vacca, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Council Member Rafael Salamanca Jr., and Council Member Andrew Cohen and New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.

About The Big Read

The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment of the Arts that encourages literacy and reading culture in local communities.

The inaugural Big Read in the Bronx was held in March and April of 2008, with a celebration of the classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.

More than 1,200 free books were distributed, many to individuals who had never owned a book before.

Previous Key Partners were The New York Yankees Foundation, The New York Times, Barnes & Noble
and Hostos Community College of the City University of New York..